The Situation of the Gravity

It all began when God accidentally inverted the gravity settings on Earth. He’d had a late night working on a new planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, and it was almost finished. Upon entering the last line of Heavenly code however, things went haywire. Anybody or anything not tied down on little ole’ Earth went flying into space. Never to be seen again.

Those lucky enough to be inside at the time only sustained minor injuries from hitting the ceiling. However, there were a lot of people, in cathedrals for example, that did not fare so well. Falling approximately one hundred and fifty metres up into a fifteenth century fresco is never fun. There are many stories of people’s experiences on this day, but here is one of my personal favourites.

At the precise moment that gravity reversed, ageing rocker Bud Axel was playing a homecoming concert in an open air stadium in Trenton, New Jersey. Five thousand people were in front of him, looking up adorably, chanting all the words. He had just struck a mighty A chord, when suddenly he felt himself fly upwards.

This was nothing unusual for Bud, as he regularly did this onstage with the help of wires. “I was doing this years before Lady Gaga or whoever”, he would say. He only felt mild annoyance that Jim Gruber, one of the roadies and stage hands, had activated the wires at the complete wrong time. He knew it was Jim too. Jim was always fucking up.

It was only when he went further up than usual that he suspected something was wrong. He jolted hard as the wires were pulled to their full length. Then he felt the guitar, which was strapped around him, pull upwards into the sky. His concern raised. As did whatever hair he had left on his head. Finally came the part that really blew his mind.

He saw that the entire audience, all five thousand of them, were flying up into the air with him. Only, they didn’t stop.

He could hear their screams fade away into the sky. He watched them disappear as their screams of adoration turned to screams of horror. And it wasn’t just the screaming fans that flew up into the sky. He could see all kinds of objects up there with them. He saw some cars, a few of his tour trucks, some large tarpaulin sheets and poles which had probably come from the food stands, all getting smaller and smaller.

Bud was not a stupid guy, he had it worked out pretty quickly that gravity had been reversed

Approximately ten seconds later, he was all alone. He was still upright, but all the blood was rushing to his head. Even though in one sense it felt completely unnatural, he flipped himself over so that his feet were towards the sky. This felt better. Strange, but better. Bud was not a stupid guy, he had it worked out pretty quickly that gravity had been reversed, so he slowly made his way climbing up the wires, back towards the ground.

Luckily for him, the stage had a ceiling about twenty five metres overhead. He was able to swing himself towards the ceiling and cut himself free. Here, his bandmates were lying in contorted positions. Some were dead, some were moaning lowly, probably paralysed. He turned and looked out. To him, the sky was green and the ground was blue. And also there was no ground. He crumpled down into a heap and cried as he fully grasped the gravity of the situation. Pun intended.

By the time God realised his little error, it was too late. The population of Earth had dwindled to almost nothing in under ten seconds flat. Virtually every animal was gone. Ironically, most of the animals that survived were the ones cruelly caged in zoos. There was also a small matter of the oceans. They all floated away too, taking with them every boat that sailed upon them and every airplane that happened to be flying overhead. He knew that soon every remaining being on the planet would die when the oxygen gradually floated away.

He quickly undid the last line of code, killing and injuring more people as they fell down from the ceilings back to the floor. After this, he felt it necessary to offer some kind of explanation. He sent down his second son, John, to carry his message.

When the first coming of John occurred, Bud Axel was laid up with a broken arm in Saint Peter’s Hospital, New Brunswick. There was nobody else there but him, but he felt he should go there anyway. When gravity was switched back on again, Bud had plummeted the twenty five feet back down to the stage, but had his fall broken somewhat by Jim Gruber’s limp body. God rest his soul.

But God himself couldn’t rest for a minute, he was manically flicking through the manual of the universe trying to see if there was any way to undo this. Eventually, he just went back to working on his new planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. His son John meanwhile, was having trouble broadcasting his message to a vastly diminished population that no longer had any working electricity, internet, or phones.

“Bollocks to this,” John thought, “I’ll just settle down here until someone crucifies me.” John was on Valentia Island as it happens, which was of no help to anybody.

There are more extraordinary tales of people’s experiences on that day, thousands of years ago, but for legal reasons we can say no more. The gross negligence case being brought against God is still ongoing.

Richard O' Gorman is a 26 year old indie/folk musician from Cork, going under the name Tootawl while on stage. He also likes to write short stories, novellas, poems, and whatever else comes into his head.

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